An object-based approach to medical process automation.

Abstract

The medical events of providers rendering services for patient care are necessarily interrelated. A clinical information system must reliably record these events and relate the information about their inter-dependency. The quality of clinical information therefore depends crucially on the proper coordination and tracking of these events according to established protocols. We introduce an object-based approach to define medical processes for their automation. For each medical process, we capture in one logical unit, an event-driven mechanism to coordinate of inter-dependent medical events of the process, and the data relevant to the process. We call the encapsulated unit a form object. Moreover, the form object may contain sub-objects each of which also encapsulates its own protocol knowledge and relevant information. In contrast to other approaches, the form object facilitates for administering medical processes due to its locality of definition, and its event-driven paradigm reflects medical events more naturally.